IoT and Banking Fast and Furious

It’s been more than three months past new-year and the clock is ticking fast. No one is willing to wait. Enterprises, Businesses, Vendors, Suppliers and Customers are all spending extra to keep in pace with competition and time. Even if you are first mover or forerunner in your industry, does not make you safe. If you do not adopt to change, you are challenged to lose the position and hence all of them thrive for instant results, instant data, instant payments etc. The technology buzz word to the adjective “instant” is “Real Time”. Today, Technology is bringing services and experience closer to mankind in offices and home. Consumers are blessed with Mobile apps that brings closer grocery and shopping, makes travel easier, bind communities and making information sharing a habit. Communication is faster and even cheaper and information services are at fingertips. Traditionally, we knew business intelligence as a day end process. Today, the era is of real time business analytics. Similarly, today the enterprises plan to cross the boundaries of the office or the systems and reach out in open Internet or up to the external partners or even to customers on real time to provide instant information and gain an instant advantage over the competition. The smart mobile phones keep one connected even on the move. Hence, technology today is not only instant and available but also converged and pervasive. Moreover, most of the Data Entry Systems are replaced by real time data collected by machines which are connected to each other and applications at back office to give instant or real time updates needed for business decisions. This mesh network of demanding people on connected machines and converged and pervasive technologies riding on primary backbone of telecom is the next trend of the industry, known as “Internet of Things” classically abbreviated as, “IoT”. Other Other buzzwords are Pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing or simply machine to machine communication. While Cloud, Analytics, Mobility and IoT are trends of tomorrow they are all closely bound to each other to deliver the technology needed for business excellence.

IoT is a concept more accessible on finger tips using mobile apps which talk to various sensing gadgets for temperature, proximity, load, impact, geography and other radio frequencies to collect real time data and present data for analysis and derive information out of the same. Every industry has something to gain from IoT. Imagine, a banking customer is notified of a bank branch or an ATM in the proximity. The customer can be guided on way to the branch or ATM. Imagine, customer walks into the branch or ATM and is automatically hooked to the bank WiFi. Further, presented with various offers on investments other than account balances and transactions over mobile app. Of course, banking today cannot happen without two factor and a password or a pin would be needed. Imagine further convergence of customer support services from Mobile to Branch. Imagine, an automobile manufacturer starts maintaining its vehicle run history and health to decide on preventive maintenance and service routines alerts such as oil replacement, wheel balancing and rotation, engine overhaul and air conditioner servicing. Imagine, insurance companies collecting data on real time on the driver discipline and vehicle utilization for faster and accurate claim settlements. Imagine the transporters are ready with the rates and time to deliver over an app for the merchants and customers. Imagine, the RTO is able to identify every vehicle for its registration data, collected over the air on Traffic signals to ensure more discipline on the city roads. Imagine, the petrol bunks giving you real time data of refilling fuel. Imagine, a parcel actually moving on the map till it reaches its destination. Having said that, the obvious question is, “Is it possible?” Yes. It is.

We in cash logistics industry, have conceptualized an IoT enabled Secured Cash Van to a bank for moving their cash. This vehicle is rich in gadgets like GPS for location tracking and geo fencing, RFID for attendance monitoring, door jammers for unauthorized access or theft prevention, proximity sensors to track loaded trunks, Hidden IP Cameras with local storage for recording events, driver viewing pane to knock the opportunists, vehicle immobilizer for runaways and further, these are controlled on a real time through our Centralized Command Center.

With my experience in IT, projects generally fail due to lack of adaptability or understanding and resistive user acceptance to change in the business community. But, an IoT project is just technology and is finally available to the business as a solution only for decision making resulting into direct benefits in raising the business scale by eradicating or mitigating manual delays, securing business deliveries by mitigating manual errors and finally envisioning improved customer experience thereby delivering growth to the top lines.